I wasn’t going to be arsed to write more about the David Walliams case but as the story is now fully in the public eye I feel that maybe I should.
The story that David Walliams went to court to stop being published is now one which we are now legally free to speak about. There’s an awful lot of allegations against Mr Walliams, which I need to point out that Mr Walliams has denied, alleging that Mr Walliams used his fame and celebrity to seduce young women. There is no suggestion that I’ve seen so far that Mr Walliams has done anything criminal, although the Guardian believes that some of the allegations should be the subject of a criminal inquiry, but the allegations do make Mr Walliams look a little sleazy. Fame is an aphrodisiac and Mr Walliams is alleged to have used that aphrodisiac on numerous occasions to behave less than honourably with young women.
The Guardian said
“Walliams, referred to in court as PPT and described as a “well-known individual”, attempted to secure a permanent injunction to stop the Guardian and ITN from publishing allegations about him. The outlets said they had more than 30 sources with first-hand accounts.
The news outlets claimed the information they intended to publish concerned numerous allegations that Walliams had abused his status over many years “in order to engage in, and/or attempt to engage in,” inappropriate and exploitative sexual activities with a large number of girls and young women.
They said they believed some of the allegations were sufficiently serious to justify a criminal investigation. Walliams denies the allegations.”
This is a story that’s been building behind the scenes for a while now and although Walliams name has been bandied about in connection to questionable conduct on social media platforms based outside of the UK, fear of libel laws probably prevented this story being published in Britain until now. I can well imagine that Mr Walliams’s alleged conduct might well have been witnessed by journalists or sources for journalists but fear of the legal consequences of publishing these stories might have suppressed them until the point when the sheer number of allegations made the story very difficult if not impossible to hide.
There’s been breadcrumbs to pick up before this story broke such as Walliams being dropped by his publisher Harper Collins in 2025 despite Walliams being the publishing house’s big earner in the children’s book field, they did this because of the mounting allegations against Walliams including that Walliams harassed young female staff at the publisher. The bookshop Waterstones also in late 2025 dropped Walliams from their big 2027 Children’s book event and the BBC dropped him in December 2025. He’s also since been abandoned by Sky movies and his own literary agent.
Many people expected this sort of downfall for Walliams and the trail of his business contacts who are distancing themselves from him has been apparent for nearly a year now. Over this period we’ve had bits and bobs of adverse stories about Walliams being circulated on social media and by the sight of entities trying not to get caught in the fall out from Walliams’s upcoming and almost inevitable downfall. However we could not know more in large part because of Britain’s Libel Laws which are ferocious.
Libel laws are what in my view prevented journalists in the 80’s and 90’s from going after Jimmy Savile as many of the crime reporters who I mixed with at the time had heard stories about Savile’s necrophilia but could not publish for fear of a libel suit. For the record none of the Savile rumours I heard from journalists at that time mentioned child sex abuse, this all came out after Savile’s death when libel suits ceased to be a fear. It could be that only the necrophilia rumours reached the ears and pens of journalists and not anything else that was more deeply hidden by Savile.
Maybe this case will be the one that propels libel law reform? This case has been bubbling under for a year or more but fear of what might happen if the story was published might have prevented it from coming out into the public eye fully earlier on. I don’t believe that libel laws should be done away with, everyone should have the right to sue someone for gross and knowing lies about a person. Instead of this drastic measure maybe we should aim for a policy similar to those that apply in some US States where there’s a higher bar for libel when someone is a public figure, such as a celebrity or a politician to prove libel and a much lower bar for a successful libel suit for ordinary citizens who are libelled?
There is much wrongdoing not just in the celebrity world in Britain that the public does not get to hear about but also in politics and public administration. This is because of fear of legal action in general or cases where people have been intimidated into fearing legal action or criminal sanction if they speak up.
It’s pretty clear that David Walliams’s career is well and truly over. His fame has not protected him from the allegations about his conduct and his presence is being scrubbed by the very platforms such as the BBC that helped to create his fame. Even if he successfully defends himself against these allegations the damage is done and mud sticks. I doubt that he will ever be published again unless it is under an assumed name and it’s unlikely that he will grace Britain’s screens again.
At best David Walliams is alleged to have been at best the sort of man who once were referred to as ‘NSIT’ or Not Safe In Taxis and at worst has done stuff that is exceedingly sleazy if not borderline criminal according to some publications such as the Guardian. It’s quite possible that without the fear of legal action the public might have heard of these allegations from British publications much earlier than they have and that is something that should worry Britons. How much terrible behaviour by celebrities, companies, government agencies etc is not in the public eye for fear of draconian legal consequences? The problem is that we do not know.
Links
Walliams dropped by Harper Collins
BBC drop Walliams in December 2025
https://nz.news.yahoo.com/bbc-cuts-ties-david-walliams-115221172.html
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